Page 211 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

COMMUNICATING POLITICS

Faced with this threat, and a rising tide of socialist opinion, the
Western powers, having defeated Germany, sanctioned the invasion
of Soviet Russia by a multinational expeditionary force including
troops from Britain, France, the US, and Japan. These forces
entered the civil war then raging in Russia on the side of the anti-
Bolshevik ‘white’ forces. The intervention failed and the Bolsheviks
went on to consolidate their power in Russia, which was eventually
renamed the Soviet Union. However, the attack established a state
of mutual hostility between the Soviets and the capitalist powers
which continued virtually unaltered until the Gorbachev era.
In the early years of the East–West conflict the governments of the
capitalist powers engaged in diplomatic and economic sanctions
against the Soviets. They also undertook an intense campaign of
propaganda directed at their own populations in an effort to
prevent them being ‘seduced’ by Bolshevism, or by milder forms
of socialism and social democracy. In the early 1920s the British
establishment manufactured the ‘Zinoviev letter’ in a bid to prevent
the election of a Labour government. The letter, allegedly from the
Soviet Foreign Minister, suggested that a future Labour government
would be the ‘creature’ of the Bolsheviks, carrying out their will
and overthrowing British capitalism. The letter was a forgery, but
extensive media publicity of its contents contributed to the Labour
Party’s subsequent electoral defeat.
In the US, the first ‘Red scare’ began shortly after the revolution
in 1918, lasting until 1920. The scare, argues historian Murray
Levin, was initiated by a coalition of corporate, media and govern-
mental interests, led by the US Steel Corporation, which in 1917
experienced major industrial unrest. In response the president of
the corporation, Judge Elbert Gray, organised what Levin calls ‘a
nationwide public relations campaign to create the stereotype of
rampant Bolshevism in the steel industry’ (1971, p. 40). The strikes
were presented by national newspapers such as the New York Times
and the Wall Street Journal as prefiguring ‘a Bolshevik holocaust’
(ibid., p. 38). The unions were accused of being communist-
led. Robert Murray observes that public opinion was initially
sympathetic to the aims of the unions and opposed to the heavy-
handed strike-breaking tactics of the employers. The latter,
therefore, had to ‘promote a more favourable public opinion
toward their own positions. Perceiving that their greatest ally
was the latent public fear of the strike’s radicalism, the steel
interests realised that much of the current animosity to [them]
would disappear and the strike would fail if the public could be

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